Tuesday, April 8

HEALTH & WELLNESS

Rural Health Cooperatives Are Innovating But Are Challenged By Connectivity And Social Distancing
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, VIDEO REELS

Rural Health Cooperatives Are Innovating But Are Challenged By Connectivity And Social Distancing

Rural areas are seeing some of the fastest spread of the COVID-19 in the U.S., taxing already stressed rural health care systems. Researchers Tanisa Adimu and Amanda Phillips Martinez head the Community Health Systems Development team of the Georgia Health Policy Center at Georgia State University, providing and evaluating technical assistance to rural health care providers and organizations around the country. Over the past months, they surveyed around 120 rural health care providers about the challenges they faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and how they are adapting to meet those challenges. Tanisa Adimu and Amanda Philips Martinez talk about the challenges rural health providers are facing. New ways to get health data There has been a drop in the number of patients making in-person vi...
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The Immune System Metabolism, And Genes Controlling Aging Can Be Influenced By Exposure To Man-Made Chemicals
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HEALTH & WELLNESS

The Immune System Metabolism, And Genes Controlling Aging Can Be Influenced By Exposure To Man-Made Chemicals

Today humans are exposed to thousands of man-made chemicals. Yet the effects on people’s health are still not fully understood. In 2020 the number of registered chemicals reached 167 million. Every day people are exposed to them through food, water, contaminated air, drugs, cosmetics and other man-made substances. Less than 1% of these chemicals were tested for toxicity, and those that were tested demonstrate ability to disrupt almost every biological process in our body. Can we infer how cumulative exposures shape our health? I am an environmental toxicologist studying effects of man-made chemicals on our health. I decided to develop a computational approach to objectively compare sensitivity of all genes to all chemicals and identify the most vulnerable biological processes. Unbiased a...
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Immigrants And U.S.-Born Hispanics Have Longer Life Expectancies Than Americans – Will The US Obesity Epidemic Change Things?
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HEALTH & WELLNESS

Immigrants And U.S.-Born Hispanics Have Longer Life Expectancies Than Americans – Will The US Obesity Epidemic Change Things?

Anti-immigrant sentiments have fueled recent national and state-level health policy efforts. In 2019, Donald Trump signed a presidential proclamation that would deny visas to immigrants who could not provide proof of insurance. He argued that they would financially burden the health care system. More recently, Missouri’s August election ballot proposed Medicaid expansion, and opponents warned that it would overwhelm Missouri hospitals with undocumented immigrants, even though they are ineligible for Medicaid benefits. We study immigrant health and population health. Our work suggests that viewing immigrants as a drain on the U.S. health care system is largely unfounded. For decades, research has shown that immigrants tend to be healthier than U.S.-born whites. Immigrants outlive U.S.-born...
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During The Summer Of COVID, Dementia Deaths Rise Leading To Concern
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

During The Summer Of COVID, Dementia Deaths Rise Leading To Concern

Deaths from dementia during the summer of 2020 are nearly 20% higher than the number of dementia-related deaths during that time in previous years, and experts don’t yet know why. An estimated 61,000 people have died from dementia, which is 11,000 more than usual within that period. “There’s something wrong, there’s something going on and it needs to be sorted out,” Robert Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a recent interview with Politico. “This is highly unusual.” As a geriatrician, I find this statistic sad but not shocking. I care for dementia patients in my clinical practice. I see firsthand how the isolation caused by the pandemic has changed their lives, whether they’re home alone, living with a caregiver, or in ...
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Socialized Health Care For Trump. What About the Rest of Us?
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Socialized Health Care For Trump. What About the Rest of Us?

We don’t know what course COVID-19 will take with Donald Trump. The White House insists he is well, even as the barrage of aggressive and even experimental treatments he’s received suggests his case is more severe than they let on. But we do know that if anyone with the virus—not to mention someone with Trump’s increased risk factors—has a good chance of pulling through, it’s him. Trump is tested regularly, so he knew at the earliest possible moment that he was infected (even if he didn’t wear a mask or cancel public events afterward). He has doctors at his side, with their sole focus on him and his wife. He has access to all available treatments and even to treatments that aren’t yet available to the public. Unlike millions of Americans, Trump didn’t have to wait for symptoms to qualif...
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Trump’s Wealth May Be The Best Medicine In Fighting COVID-19
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Trump’s Wealth May Be The Best Medicine In Fighting COVID-19

With President Donald Trump testing positive for coronavirus, speculation has begun regarding possible outcomes. The reality is, it’s impossible to say for certain what will happen to an individual once they’ve contracted COVID. Some people might have no symptoms at all, while others might have far worse outcomes. It’s one of the many mysteries of the virus that scientists worldwide are working around the clock to untangle. When it comes to risk, we do know some things, but many remain uncertain. We can change some things, and some we’re stuck with. It’s now common knowledge that age is the most important factor driving the risk of worse outcomes from COVID. Being male, living with obesity, being from a non-White ethnic group and having long-term conditions—such as diabetes and heart dise...
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What Is COVAX And Why Does It Matter For Getting Vaccines To Developing Nations?
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HEALTH & WELLNESS, VIDEO REELS

What Is COVAX And Why Does It Matter For Getting Vaccines To Developing Nations?

There is a global effort to distribute vaccines to poorer countries, but some of the world’s largest countries, including the U.S., Russia and China, do not intend to support the effort. That lack of backing could have devastating consequences for accessing a COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. and many poor countries around the world. That is because the U.S. will not have access to vaccines secured by the initiative, called COVAX. Also, COVAX may lack the funding it needs to help poor countries control their epidemics, enabling the virus to continue to circle the globe. I am an ethicist at Binghamton University and am interested in COVAX because I work on global health and justice. What is the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility? COVAX, formally known as The COVID-19 Vaccines Glo...
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Your child’s vaccines: What you need to know about catching up during the COVID-19 pandemic
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, Journalism

Your child’s vaccines: What you need to know about catching up during the COVID-19 pandemic

This spring, after stay-at-home orders were announced and schools shut down across the nation, many families stopped going to their pediatrician. As a result, kids have fallen behind on important childhood vaccinations. Vaccination rates declined starkly after mid-March, with up to 60% reductions in some areas of the country. Nationwide, vaccination rates dropped by 22% among Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program recipients under 2. Now that kids are coming back to pediatricians like me, many parents have questions about catching up. Why is it a problem that my child is behind on vaccines? Vaccines protect your child from serious communicable diseases including brain infections, pneumonia, bloodstream infections and, in the case of the HPV and hepatitis B vaccines, even some t...
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Pregnancy during a pandemic: The stress of COVID-19 on pregnant women and new mothers is showing
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Pregnancy during a pandemic: The stress of COVID-19 on pregnant women and new mothers is showing

Pregnancy is stressful, to say the least, but COVID-19 brings new challenges to parents of newborns. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified pregnant women as a vulnerable population. If infected, they are more likely to be hospitalized and require ventilation and their risk of preterm birth goes up. Economists predict that the U.S. may have at least 500,000 fewer births because of the pandemic. Deciding not to become pregnant during a pandemic is understandable, particularly in the U.S., as it is one of five countries worldwide and the only country classified as high-income by the World Bank, that does not mandate paid maternity leave for non-federally employed workers. As scholars who study prenatal and postnatal stress, maternal nutrition and the brain developmen...
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Keeping coronavirus vaccines at subzero temperatures during distribution will be hard, but likely key to ending pandemic
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HEALTH & WELLNESS

Keeping coronavirus vaccines at subzero temperatures during distribution will be hard, but likely key to ending pandemic

Just like a fresh piece of fish, vaccines are highly perishable products and must be kept at very cold, specific temperatures. The majority of COVID-19 vaccines under development – like the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines – are new RNA-based vaccines. If they get too warm or too cold they spoil. And, just like fish, a spoiled vaccine must be thrown away. So how do companies and public health agencies get vaccines to the people who need them? The answer is something called the vaccine cold chain – a supply chain that can keep vaccines in tightly controlled temperatures from the moment they are made to the moment that they are administered to a person. Ultimately, hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. and billions globally are going to need a coronavirus vaccine – and potentially two dos...
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